National Junior College

National Junior College

The National Junior College, abbreviation NJC, is a junior college in Singapore, located in the Bukit Timah neighbourhood. Founded in 1969 to provide a centralized two year pre-university education leading to the Singapore-Cambridge GCE 'A' Level certificate, NJC prides itself in being the top government junior college as well as a pioneer and first in many ways, including pioneering the introduction of a specialized lecture-tutorial system in its pedagogy as well as the merging of the various language streams. Since then, other junior colleges have been established with this same model to provide the same opportunity to many more aspiring students who aim to go on to top universities, both locally and overseas. Since its inception, NJC has been producing numerous scholars, including the prestigious President's Scholars, SAF and SPF scholars as well as recipients of various PSC, government, statutory boards and private scholarships among others. NJC has to date produced 45 President's Scholars, a record among Singapore schools only recently beaten by Singapore's second oldest junior college, Hwa Chong Institution, in 2007. As of 2008, NJC has not produced a President's Scholar for 12 years running, the last being Lee Chen Ee in 1996. This is the longest President Scholar drought faced by the college, the second-longest being a 3-year drought from 1993-1996. NJC was also the first junior college approved by the Ministry of Education to introduce a 4-year Integrated Programme in 2004 to provide a through-train education for capable Secondary 3 students, allowing them to bypass the traditional GCE 'O' Levels and giving them the opportunity and room for more creative pursuits which would be hard to pursue in the traditional GCE 'O' Level path. Out of the 5 other colleges who have adopted the Integrated Programme, namely Raffles Junior College, Hwa Chong Institution, Victoria Junior College and Temasek Junior College, National Junior College is the only one which maintains the segregation between Mainstream and IP classes throughout the entire 4 years of IP. The other 4 colleges have chosen instead to amalgate IP and Mainstream classes from IP Year 3 onwards.